Love & Immortality Essay Often outside forces have a bigger hand in propelling a protagonist onward in his epic journey than the protagonist himself. The situations that the protagonists find themselves in and the people in their lives both have a great part in the decisions they make. It is not just the character’s own will that pushes him to do great things; it is the people he is surrounded by that influence his decisions and circumstances that drive him to accomplish the great feats that he otherwise might have never dreamed of achieving.

This is portrayed through the use of secondary characters in both Gilgamesh by Joan London and in The Epic of Gilgamesh. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, the sole reason Gilgamesh decides to make his epic journey to the underworld is his companion Enkidu. The death of Enkidu drives him to his epic quest for immortality, a journey he otherwise would never have made. Enkidu’s death causes him such grief and evokes such fear of his own mortality that he decides to go to a place no mortal has ever ventured. It is because of Enkidu that Gilgamesh grows as a person, finds himself, and eventually even acquires immortality in a manner of speaking.

After his epic quest, he returns to Uruk as a changed man and finally begins to think like a king. He finds his immortality in the city that he had built and ruled. His place is in Uruk, which, if he rules it well, will live on as his legacy and continue to grow in power and beauty. Gilgamesh finally finds that there is no way to truly elude death: at least not corporeally. Utnapishtim’s story illustrates to Gilgamesh that only humanity as a whole perseveres. Even if each of us is to meet our own end eventually, the human cycle of life continues indefinitely. People die, but humankind will always endure.

Enkidu’s death is paramount in propelling the events necessary to evoke such change in a man as prideful as Gilgamesh. In London’s Gilgamesh, Edith’s decision to make the strenuous journey to Armenia is largely influenced by the people in her life. Edith’s whole world revolves around the family farm, it is the only world she knows- that is until two strangers change that. Leopold and Aram’s arrival marks the beginning of a change in Edith. They are the catalysts that make her yearn to see the world. She wants to join them on their adventures, and she wants to see the world with her own eyes.

The arrival of Leopold and Aram get the wheels turning for Edith’s epic journey to Armenia. Without this catalyst, Edith may never have contemplated leaving even Nunderup, let alone the country. There are many people who drove Edith to go to Armenia. Edith wanted to escape her life, her sister and mother, but the biggest factors in her making the decision to go were Aram and their son, Jim. She felt lost with her foreign baby and felt the need to go and find somewhere that felt like home, because Australia no longer was that for her. She needed to find Aram, and find home by settling down and being a family with him.

She needed all these factors in place to give her the push and the courage to go to a foreign country to find the man that she loves. Often the decisions one makes comes not just from within but are impacted by the people and the environment without. Lives are composed of the actions of and reactions to loved ones and hated ones. Events are interconnected and it is rare that an epic journey comes about just from ones own will. Often it is environment, the people within, and circumstances that shape ones character and not the other way around.

Author: Brandon Johnson

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